I do wonder what it would be like to use an editor where the main cursor navigation was forward/backward incremental search. One case of this is the Canon CAT[1] word processor, which used "LEAP" keys for cursor movement (and nothing else).
I'm often curious how productive it would be to use while coding.
The EasyMotion plugin for vim has a feature similar to this. When I start searching it matches incrementally, highlighting matches on each screen which I can cycle through with tab. When I see a screen with the match I want, I press enter and then the first 1 or 2 characters of each match are replaced with something like a, b, or ;a. Pressing the appropriate key combination jumps straight to the desired word.
However, if you're just editing text on the same screen you can skip the search. I have it set up so that I press ,w and then every word after my cursor has its first one or two characters replaced. I can jump to any word by pressing those. There's also a hybrid mode where pressing one key and then the first letter of the desired word highlights only those matching words on the entire screen, which I can then jump to.
However, if you're just editing text on the same screen you can skip the search. I have it set up so that I press ,w and then every word after my cursor has its first one or two characters replaced. I can jump to any word by pressing those. There's also a hybrid mode where pressing one key and then the first letter of the desired word highlights only those matching words on the entire screen, which I can then jump to.
https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-easymotion/